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Warning: Possible GSL Spoiler
This is my first thread. I did a search and couldn’t find anything like this. If I’ve made a mistake in posting, please feel free to close this.
I noticed this micro trick last night during the Nada vs Top match. During Nada’s final push on Crevasse, he loaded a medivac with marines and dropped them in front of his push. He didn’t drop them on Top’s tanks. They were dropped in the gap between each player’s forces. We’ve all seen players put a marine or SCV out in front of their army to soak the first volley of tank splash. Nada’s trick uses drops to absorb multiple rounds to tank blasts before his push even arrives.
How it works:
Command your medivac to drop marines while moving towards the enemy tank line. Every time a new marine drops it should be the closest target to your opponent’s tanks, and they will auto target it. This allows your army to move foreword while taking minimal splash damage. If your medivac reaches the enemy tank line, it will drop marines on the enemy tanks, causing them to take splash damage.
Testing:
I tested this technique using different sized armies (25 marines, 6 tanks, 1 medivac OR 15 marines, 6 tanks, 1 medivac) against an army of 6 sieged tanks and 10 marines. All marines have combat shields, attacking marines have stim. I couldn’t consistently stim both the attacking marines and defending marines at identical times, so I settled for an unstimmed defense. Tanks/marines were spread out and A-moved into the enemy’s siege line.
The setup looks something like this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Cs1kO.jpg)
I repeated the process with 1 marine in front to soak a tank blast:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/56iTL.jpg)
And again with a medivac loaded with 4 marines dropping in front of the push:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/qxEmx.jpg)
These marines were taken out of the original marine count, so the push contained either 11 or 21 marines, with 4 more in a medivac.
Results:
Starting army: 25 marines (stim), 6 tanks, 1 medivac
A-Move: Win – 2 marines, 4 tanks (2 at half health), 1 medivac survive
1 Marine in front: Win – 1 Marine, 5 tanks (1 at half health), 1 medivac survive
Nada’s drop (4 marines): Win – 6 tanks (1 mostly dead), 1 medivac survive
Since the army with 25 marines and 6 tanks always wins, I tried the same thing with a smaller army, to see if this technique could turn a loss into a win.
Starting army:15 marines (stim), 6 tanks, 1 medivac
A-Move: Lose – 3 enemy tanks (2 badly damaged) survive
+ Show Spoiler +
1 Marine in front: Lose – 1 enemy tank lives (barely). This was a typical result, but the battle would be easily winnable with any kind of micro at all. It’s essentially a tie.
+ Show Spoiler +
Nada’s drop (4 marines): Win – 3 tanks (1 mostly dead, 2 at half health), 1 medivac survive.
+ Show Spoiler +
In both cases, dropping marines in front of the push is the most effective way to break a siege line. This drop works best when the enemy marine count is low. Opponents with high marine counts will either kill the medivac outright or simply kill dropped marines between tank splashes.
Replays:
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[url blocked]
Here is a replay from the unit tester. This replay contains all the attempts I used for my writeup and screenshots. I botched at least one attempt, but it should be clear which attempts I used for the screenshots. I also walked away for about 10 minutes in the middle (I just did this for the screen captures and final numbers, didn't expect to upload it).
The attempt most people will be interested in (15 marines, 6 tanks using Nada's trick) begins at about 48 minutes.
Edit: Rehosted Images
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Zergs have been doing this for some time now lol. Either leading with a queen, 175 HP! or dropping stuff out of overlords
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On May 04 2011 10:31 Mr. Enchilada wrote:
Zergs have been doing this for some time now lol. Either leading with a queen, 175 HP! or dropping stuff out of overlords
Leading with units, spreading before a push, or dropping directly onto tanks are pretty common techniques. This trick allows a player to always have at least 1 unit in front of his main army soaking tank shots. It's not really effective for fast units like zerglings, since they close the gap so quickly (much more quickly than overlords can move in range of tanks and drop). There's definitely potential for zealot drops doing the same thing, though.
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Thanks for explaining this, I was wondering how Nada was breaking seige lines so effectively in small numbers! now i dont have to rewatch those games 
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You should do some video's.
Good trick though
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Thanks for this explanation, this will be very helpful.
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ALLEYCAT BLUES51722 Posts
I'm surprised people haven't been doing it before because its done in every BW TvT and even in BW PvT(zealot bombing).
normally you'd want to drop between the 2 most clumped up tanks so the other tanks can instantly kill 2 tanks instead of just one.
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On May 04 2011 11:13 BLinD-RawR wrote:
I'm surprised people haven't been doing it before because its done in every BW TvT and even in BW PvT(zealot bombing).
normally you'd want to drop between the 2 most clumped up tanks so the other tanks can instantly kill 2 tanks instead of just one.
Well... tanks don't overkill now and Terran will almost always have marines. TvT was dropping tanks on sieged tanks to minimize damage as well as obtain local superiority in tanks, not distract them.
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I thought this was common to be honest, and it worked well in last nights GSL games because his opponent was already dead and didn`t have any marines to support his tanks infront. Every encounter where Nada broke Top`s line was because Top was too spread out. Micro trick or not it would have still broke the light tank line.
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What if they focus fire your tanks and stuff manually?
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One problem wiht this is the lack of testing it with vikings, which are standard in tvt for the extra range. If they have air superiority then you cannot do this.
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On May 04 2011 11:55 XDJuicebox wrote:
What if they focus fire your tanks and stuff manually?
i mean, of course, the way to beat a well micro-ed force is to micro even better yourself (assuming even macro). it certainly would work, but requires a LOT of extra effort, which may cost more APM or attention than the player has at the moment.
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Honestly this should be stickied to show an example of a good thread. I hope others can replicate this finding.
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Does this almost break TvT? If you can bust a tank line with perhaps 5 extra marines and a medivac why wouldn't you always go BIO?
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On May 04 2011 11:54 mango_destroyer wrote:
I thought this was common to be honest, and it worked well in last nights GSL games because his opponent was already dead and didn`t have any marines to support his tanks infront. Every encounter where Nada broke Top`s line was because Top was too spread out. Micro trick or not it would have still broke the light tank line.
You're thinking about the game on Xel'Nage fortress. Top had his tank line spread north to south, so he was protected from the west. Nada attacked from the north and rolled through.
On May 04 2011 11:55 XDJuicebox wrote:
What if they focus fire your tanks and stuff manually?
You want your tanks melting marines, but yes, you could focus fire. You'd have a tough time getting your tanks to efficiently kill their targets though.
Either way. This is a very simple technique. If you can get your opponent to waste apm on efficiently focus firing targets with a full tank line, it's completely worth it.
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On May 04 2011 12:07 1nMack1 wrote:
Does this almost break TvT? If you can bust a tank line with perhaps 5 extra marines and a medivac why wouldn't you always go BIO?
Certainly not. I mentioned briefly at the end, if your opponent has a substantial marine force with their tanks, this becomes much less effective.
Someone above mentioned the role of vikings as well. I didn't test it with vikings present, but the result should be the same unless your opponent has 3+ vikings in position. You're pretty much guaranteed to lose the medivac, but it's more or less sacrificial anyway. It survived in all the tests I ran, even the ones in which the army died, but you can assume it would be lost to a turret or reinforcements in any real scenario.
Also, I think you're way underestimating the role of tanks here. I don't have the capabilities to make a video, but go try it in a unit tester. In the battle, the attaching marines survive long enough to kill off all or most of the opponent's marines. After that, the unsieged tanks are extremely effective against their sieged counterparts. In most cases, this came down to a tank vs tank battle.
The drop simply allows your marines to stay alive long enough to wipe out your opponent's marines and deal some damage to his tanks. It's possible marauders would do the same job, but they'd be more likely to die to splash.
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Well If I FE I can hit a timing where you're expanding with less than 5 tanks and my army should be bolstered at least somewhat from my expo. Aren't Marauders > Tanks in the situation you described? Sure they take 1 less hit to kill, but they stim and are cheaper.
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I certainly noticed that Nada played aggressive to break the contain. The match was important from a TvT standpoint because it showed that contains are risky since the container risks spreading out their forces.
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Oh, yeah, I see what hes trying to do here, the marine draws the tank fire and the rest of the army comes upwards. Yay! I'll see if this can work out for me in TvT. Thanks.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7wjfR.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZDGkt.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8BHg1.jpg)
